


The Universe, a Mighty Stranger

by Who_Needs_Reality



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bellamy thinks Clarke hates him, Clarke thinks Bellamy's forgotten her, F/M, Fluff, Mutual Pining, POV Bellamy Blake, POV Clarke Griffin, Reunion Fic, season 5 fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 08:15:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11985834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Who_Needs_Reality/pseuds/Who_Needs_Reality
Summary: She’s turned over every memory she has with them, recounting their stories in excruciating detail to Madi, all in desperate efforts to remember. And as for them. Well, to them, she’s been dead. And it’s not like she wants them to have mourned her for six years--she did what she did so that they could survive, so they could live, not so they could wallow in regret--but.They knew you, what, nine months?the same voice in her head whispers,what's six months to nine years? You were just a blip on their radar.Or, Bellamy and Clarke reunite after six years. It's good. Or at least, it's supposed to be.{Reunion Fic}





	The Universe, a Mighty Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> I know I haven't posted anything in several months, and I know this isn't an update in any of my poor neglected WIPs but when inspiration strikes I tend to just roll with it. Sorry. Anyway, thank you to Jade, Nai, Jade (again) and Cait who all screamed about various headcanons with me on Twitter that inspired this fic. And I wouldn't exactly call this a "spec" fic since it's more wishful thinking than anything else, but JRoth can't snatch my dreams from me the way he does canon Bellarke, so... 
> 
> Also I initially thought this was going to be like 2k tops. It's not. Title from Wuthering Heights.

“We have to be careful,” Bellamy says as Raven lets the hatch down. “I know we all want to believe it’s safe out there--”

“Which it will be,” Murphy interjects. “Because it’s been over a damn year since it was supposed to become safe.”

Bellamy sighs, but he knows he’s lost their attention now he can feel the sunlight hitting his back as the door opens. “Just keep your suits on. The air could still be toxic.”

“If the air’s toxic,” comes a voice from behind him, “you’re all dead anyways.”

He sees the surprise register on Raven’s face before he lets himself turn and recognise… _her_. He wonders, for a moment, if the air really _is_ toxic. If it’s just liquefying his brain, making him see things that aren’t there any more. But then he hears Murphy breathe “holy shit,” and somehow, some part of his brain begins to process that she’s there. Clarke’s here. Alive.

She takes a step towards the ship, and he swallows. Clarke lifts her hand, she’s showing him something--a radio. “Every three hours means every three hours Bellamy,” her little half-smile is watery, but oh, so achingly familiar. “Though I’d have settled for every three _years_ by this point. Either way--” her voice finally breaks, and suddenly Bellamy is so sick of _not_ holding her that he feels himself dropping down from the ship door, all caution temporarily assuaged. “You’re late,” she says when he reaches her.

He forces himself to stop for a moment, to let his eyes fly over her just once. Not really seeing anything but making sure she’s alive. “Sorry,” he rasps, and then-- “ _Clarke_.” He swears his heart grows three sizes just from finally letting himself say her name, like some vital piece of him that was missing has snapped back into place. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what happened. They just hover for a moment, staring at each other, and then a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob wrenches itself from Clarke’s chest. He surges forward at once, drawing her to him, holding her, _feeling_ her, warm and close and real against his chest. Her arms wrap around his waist, and she clutches at him tightly like she’s afraid he’ll fly away if she lets go.

“Jesus,” Raven says, “are we ever going to get our turns or what?”

Clarke breaks away at that, but he can sense her reluctance and it makes him smile; his smile widens when Raven yanks her into an embrace and the girls are laughing and crying and clutching at each other, when Murphy shakes his head in disbelief and no small measure of admiration and slings an arm around her.

Clarke glances around, biting her lip. His heart aches as her brow furrows, the sheer familiarity of it suddenly so overwhelming his chest feels tight. “Where’s Monty? The others?”

Bellamy exchanges a glance with Raven and Murphy.

“It’s a long story,” Raven offers, and fills Clarke in as briefly as possible about the hijacking of the Ring by an Eligius Scout Ship about three years ago, how it took Echo and Emori believing they’d have intel about Earth, and Harper and Monty just because they were there, how they were depleted of enough fuel by the raid that they got delayed a year while they made enough to come down.

“So basically,” Raven finishes “we’ve been trying to track down Eligius for a while. It’s hard though when our giant hunk of metal in the sky doesn’t _move_.”

“Well,” Clarke tilts her head to the side thoughtfully, “it seems like you’re in luck. Because they just about beat you here.”

***

“Three of them are here,” Clarke murmurs into the radio, “the others were taken. By the people in the bad ship.”  
“Which three?” Madi’s voice crackles back.

Clarke glances over her shoulder--they’re walking a few paces behind her, their heads bent in conversation over something she can’t hear. “Raven, Murphy. And Bellamy.”

“He’s your favourite, right?”

“Your words, Madi, not mine.”

“Can I see their ship?”

“Not just yet. We’re coming to meet you though, keep a look out for us.”

They exchange brief goodbyes, and Clarke snaps the radio back to her belt. She wonders, for a moment, if she should fall back and walk with the others, but decides against it. They probably want a little while to acclimate themselves to being back, and she doesn’t want to intrude on that. She can’t resist stealing glances backwards, however, drinking in the sight of them in bursts. Murphy’s changed his hair, Raven’s walking more easily on her leg. Bellamy… the sight of him tugs at something in her, because he’s so familiar and different all at once. There’s a more relaxed bearing to his gait, he stands straighter. And, of course the beard. If it can be called that. Bellamy looks up just then, and she shakes herself. “It’s just round here.”

They come up to the door to the bunker, just outside where the rover is parked, and Clarke turns the radio on again, tells Madi to let them in in a low voice.

Her head appears out the top of the bunker first, and then the rest of her. “They’re here?”

Clarke puts an arm around her. “Madi, I’d like you to meet… my friends.”

Madi scans the group quickly, drinking them in, and, Clarke imagines, trying to match them up to the descriptions she’s heard of them.

Raven and Murphy both look to Bellamy for a second, another silent conversation that Clarke can’t quite follow before Bellamy crouches down in front of Madi. “Hey,” he says, “you’re Madi, right?”

She nods.

“I’m Bellamy. It’s nice to meet you--I’m just sorry we got held up on the way.”

Madi tilts her head sideways, regarding him for a moment before apparently deciding that she approves, and then she’s off. She fires out questions like bullets, demanding details about life on the Ark, what space was like… everything. Somewhere in the middle of the interrogation, Clarke decides Madi will be fine, and murmurs something about leaving them all to settle in before she slips back out of the bunker. She’ll have to go back inside in a minute, brief the others on the state of things: Bellamy will want to know about the bunker, Raven probably has questions about the resources they have on hand. But first, Clarke just wants a moment to process it. The exact situation she’s dreamed up a million different ways over the last six years is here. And it’s… good. It _is_. Her friends are _alive,_  and they’re here, of course it’s good. But there’s a voice whispering in the back of her head, wondering if she really _is_ their friend anymore. They are _hers_ of course, but she’s been thinking about them every day for six years. She’s turned over every memory she has with them, recounting their stories in excruciating detail to Madi, all in desperate efforts to _remember_. And as for them. Well, to them, she’s been dead. And it’s not like she wants them to have mourned her for six years--she did what she did so that they could survive, so they could live, not so they could wallow in regret--but. _They knew you, what, nine months?_  the same voice in her head whispers, _what’s nine months to six years? You were just a blip on their radar_.

***

Bellamy didn’t expect things to be easy when they got back to Earth, but he didn’t expect them to be this _hard_ either. He didn’t expect to come back a year late. He didn’t expect to discover that Octavia was still trapped in the bunker with no means of contact. He didn’t expect not to find himself squinting whenever the sun shone too brightly, or feeling a little thrown off to have the ever-present mechanical hum of the ring replaced by the whispering of wind through the leaves. And he didn’t expect Clarke to hate him.

If he’d expected her to be alive, he might have. He would have. But he’d truly thought she’d died--how could she not have? When he watched an angry fire consume the world, taking everything good and alive and beautiful with it? Bellamy thought he’d watched her die from space. The first couple of months on the ring had been a raw haze of grief, where the pain of knowing that she was dead-- _Clarke_ was dead--because he’d left her behind seemed to cripple him.

Only now she’s not dead. But he’d still left her behind. He glances sidelong at her; they’re out gathering food, and she’s a little way from the group, tugging berries from bushes with practiced efficiency. Something inside him cracks at the image of her doing tasks like these alone, day after day, knowing that she’d been left behind.

“You’re thinking too hard.” Murphy doesn’t look up from sorting through some dubious looking mushrooms.

“You think any form of thinking is _thinking too hard_ ,” Bellamy grouses.

Murphy, as usual, ignores him. “Seriously. If anyone should be looking that depressed it should be me, given my girlfriend’s being held captive by the space police.”

“You think she’s still your girlfriend three years later?” Raven interjects. She smirks when Murphy flips her off. “I’m just saying, if she’s hard up and there’s a really hot prison guard--”

“Shut the fuck up, Reyes.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes at the pair of them, relieved not to have the focus on him anymore. It’s true that his situation is, on balance, pretty damn good. He’s on a living, breathing planet that feels more like a home than the steel cage of the Ark ever did, and his… and Clarke is alive. No matter how much she must hate him for abandoning her, leaving her to survive alone, she’s alive. That’s the most important thing. She even has a kid.

Speaking of which, Madi is dividing her attention between setting up some kind of elaborate trap, and “overseeing”--as she calls it--the three of them at their work (“You were up in space for a really long time,” she’d pointed out, “Clarke said you had to grow plants magically, without soil. You might not be able to spot the non-magical plants that are good to eat”). Bellamy likes the little girl instantly--she’s bossy and sharp and curious, plus, she’s a _kid_.

“How’re we doing?” he asks her with a smile when he catches her staring unabashedly at them.

She eyes his handful of plants critically before nodding. “None of those will kill us, so for now, you’re good.”

He lets out a bark of laughter at that. More than anything, Madi makes him smile because at least Clarke had her. He knows that he made the right call, closing the rocket doors and leaving without Clarke. After all, it wouldn’t have done any good waiting for her and getting all eight of them killed in the process. So he is, in the most general sense, glad that everyone ended up alive. He’s okay. It’s okay that Clarke’s ignoring, or at least avoiding, him. Madi was there to make sure she didn’t have to spend all those years by herself just because Bellamy left her to die.

“Is it true you had an evil witch try to control your thoughts once?” Madi’s asking Raven now with wide eyes, having apparently finished setting up the trap. “But your brain was so strong you forced her out of your head?”

She’s looking at Raven with the naked, unbridled awe that Raven usually inspires, and the mechanic smiles with unusual softness. “Clarke told you that, huh?”

Madi nods. “She said you have the best brain in the whole wide world.”

Raven grins. “I am pretty awesome. But I had help. Getting rid of the witch.” She starts describing, in gentler, more careful terms, her fight against ALIE, stumbling through fairytale metaphors.

“Hey.”

He glances up sharply--he hadn’t heard Clarke approach. “Hey.”

“I’m going to go out a little further, try and hunt. Madi knows the way back to the bunker, she’ll show you guys how to start preparing the plants for eating.”

Bellamy frowns. “You’re going out there alone.”

“Well, yeah.” She blinks at him like he’s asking an obvious question, then he realises the implications of what he said and winces. “Did you, um. Would you like to come with me?”

He feels like an even bigger asshole now. She’s fidgeting nervously, and yes, of course, he wants to go with her, he doesn’t particularly feel like being more than five feet away from her ever again. But just because he’s here now doesn’t mean she’s magically forgotten about the fact that he left her, and he’s not going to make it worse by foisting himself on her when she’d clearly rather be alone.

“It’s fine,” he smiles as best he could. “You go ahead.”

***

She spots the miners when she’s hunched over in the forest. She’s keeping her eyes trained for some squirrels, maybe a couple of rabbits--any of the small creatures that have started to reappear after the carnage of Praimfaya--and resolutely not thinking about Bellamy giving her the brushoff when she asked him to come along, telling herself she’s being stupid, that just because he wouldn’t have thought twice about being alone with her before, it’s only logical that he’s wary and unwilling now she’s a stranger who’s been dead to him longer than she’s been alive to him, and that’s when she hears them.

“The scouts just got back,” a woman’s voice says, “the perimeter of the habitable area is small, doesn’t extend far west of Baltimore for more than a couple of miles.”

Clarke moves silently to train her gun in the direction the voices are coming from, frowning. _Baltimore_?

“It’s crazy,” says a man, “I mean, I knew it would be different but… Jesus, even the Mall’s gone. D.C’s wasteland.”

D.C… with a shiver, Clarke realises they must be using the names that people had for the nearby villages before the apocalypse. Before the first one.

“Supplies are tight as it is,” says the woman again, “we’ve got to start rationing straight away before we get a gauge on soil fertility and whatnot.”

Their voices fade in the other direction, with no sign that they’ve realised she exists. Retreating swiftly, she picks up her radio. “Madi,” she says, “get everyone in the bunker, now. I’ll explain when I get back.”

 

The four of them are talking when she opens the door, but stop when they see her. They all look expectant, but Madi’s the only one who speaks.

“What’s going on?” she asks, moving towards her.

Clarke puts an arm around her, pulls her close. “Remember the bad ship we saw?”

Madi tugs on the ends of her braids. “Yeah.”

“The people on it are close by. You know where I kept our escape packs right?”

“Under the beds.”

“Right. Go get them, I’ll explain to the others what’s going on.”

Madi runs off and Clarke looks up to find the three of them all watching her.

“You gonna fill us in?” Murphy asks.

Clarke presses at the crease between her eyebrows with the pad of her thumb. “Some of the people from the mining ship were in the woods when I was trying to hunt.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath from Bellamy. “Did they see you?”

She shakes her head. “No, I was hidden. But I overheard them. They’ve been scouting the area and they’re already planning to do a few more sweeps for resources.”

Bellamy exchanges a glance with the other two, and they have a brief silent conversation in a language Clarke never learnt to speak. He looks back at her with a tight nod. “Okay. So when do we go out and meet them?”

She stares at him. “What?”

“They’ve got Emori,” Murphy grits out, “and all our friends.”

“We need to start planning negotiations,” Bellamy says, arms folded across his chest, “we’ll have to face them anyway, and it’s smarter to approach them and try to get our friends back while minimising the chance of conflict.”

“Absolutely not,” Clarke shakes her head vehemently, “I’m not risking it.”

Raven cocks an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

Her gaze flickers to each of them wildly. None of them budge. “Right now? We have a leg up. They don’t know we’re here. We have to lay low and take them out when we get the chance.”

It’s Bellamy’s turn to look incredulous. “ _Take them out_? Clarke, you don’t even know what those people want--”

“ _Yes_ I do,” she snaps, “or what they’re going to want very soon. This? The land around us? That’s _all there is_. There’s nothing else, no other resources--” she wipes her face with both hands--“and when they realise that, they’re going to try to _take it_.”

“Clarke--”

“We have to move a little out the way and keep hidden so we can strike before they do and get the others out that way.”

“That’s bullshit!” Murphy shouts. “We can’t risk them being--”

“ _I’m not risking Madi!_ ” she yells, “ _I’m_ not risking it! In case you missed it, I have a _kid_ and we didn’t survive a fucking apocalypse only for her to get snatched up and held for ransom or killed because we trusted the wrong people!” They’re all staring at her now, staring like she’s crazy, but Clarke doesn’t care. She stares at Bellamy, her eyes blown wild.

A muscle in his jaw jumps. “We have to do this now, Clarke,” he says, calm, unwavering. And then he turns away from her.

***

The negotiations with the Eligius people don’t go quite as smoothly as he’d like--both sides are tense, and Clarke is terse and rigid the whole time. If she didn’t hate him before, he’s definitely taken care of that now. It’s a long process but finally, _finally_ , an agreement is reached. There’s an antsiness as they set up camp for the night, Clarke building a fire in silence while Madi starts asking questions about Monty and Harper and Emori and Echo. He loves the kid already somehow--she’s _Clarke’s_ of course he does--and he wants, eventually, for her to love him too. Then he feels bad for wanting that. It’s not like he has any right to, not after he forced Clarke to put the girl at risk. Again, he knows it was the right call, on some intellectual level. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel something in his chest splinter when he sees Clarke pull Madi close to her and realises, in a moment of blinding clarity, that this was _it_ \--Madi was all Clarke had in the years after he left her behind, and she thought he wanted to put that in danger too.

“Jesus,” Raven mutters next to him, “I figured the brooding would stop or at least let up a little after you got her back. But nope, apparently moping asshole is just who you are now.”

Bellamy scoffs. “You’re just now realising this?”

She looks unimpressed. “Cut the shit, Blake. What’s going on with you?”

He swallows. “She’s never going to forgive me.”

Raven’s face twists and Bellamy feels bad because he knows Raven hears the implication--she’ll never forgive  _them_ \--but he stills feel more responsible somehow. Eventually, Raven just shakes her head. “Get some sleep.” 

If there’s anything he misses about the ring, it’s the beds. They weren’t particularly plush, but they were flat and smooth and clean. It’s hard to sleep on the ground again after that, the twigs and mud crunching uncomfortably underneath him. Still, Bellamy wouldn’t trade back, not when he gets the breeze in his hair and the stars above him instead of around him. But he can’t sleep. Rolling to his side, he lets his eyes roam around him. Raven is slumped against a tree, and Murphy’s flopped face down across the fire from him. Madi had gone to sleep in the rover which is parked next to them and Clarke--

Bellamy sits bolt upright when he sees she’s gone, rigid with panic. He’s on his feet before his brain really catches up with him, and he stumbles into the trees. “Clarke?” There’s nothing, and _oh God_ , the possibilities start flooding through his brain at a million miles an hour--the Eligius people have taken her, she went to stretch her legs and something happened, she left… He shakes himself. She wouldn’t _leave_ , not without Madi… _Madi_.

He hurries back to the rover and throws the door open, letting a sigh of the relief when he sees the girl curled up inside, shifting a little in her sleep. She looks peaceful, and Bellamy lets himself smile as he eases the door shut. It’s as he’s turning away that he hears a voice-- _her_ voice--coming from behind him. Picking his way through the trees as best he can without walking into them in the darkness, he finds himself at the end of a small clearing. He inhales sharply when he sees her, hunched over a little way in the distance. Talking into a radio.

“So you’re back,” she says. “At least… you’re here. You’re alive.” She pauses. “But I still miss you, Bellamy.”

He had been making his way towards her, but at that, he freezes.

“I’m not--I know things are different. They need to be. And now you’re here. I guess I didn’t expect you to feel…”

There’s a part of him that wants to know what she’s going to say, that wants to use this moment to shortcut his way into some kind of communication with her. But this is clearly not something that’s meant for him to overhear. “Clarke?”

She jumps to her feet, gun in hand, but she lowers it when she sees it’s him. “Bellamy? What--how much did you hear?”

He scrubs at the back of his neck. “Not, uh… I woke up and saw you weren’t there. I just wanted to see if you were alright.” He waits for a moment, but she doesn’t say anything. “I can walk back with you.” She just stares at the radio in her hand. “Or, um, I can just go.”

Bellamy tries to keep the hurt from showing on his face when he turns to leaves. He’s already started back for the campsite when she says: “every single day.”

“What?”

She hasn’t moved, or even looked up at him. “I radioed you. Every day for six years. All of you in the ring, but… mostly you.” Finally, she raises her head and meets his gaze. “For a while, I thought you could hear me, that you’d answer. And then I figured your comms must be down, but I couldn’t stop. After it’d been a month since you guys were supposed to get back I thought--” she swallow, blinking at the sky-- “I didn’t know if you were even alive up there. But I still kept talking to you and it gave me hope. It… you kept me sane Bellamy.” She smiles at him, a small, sad smile. “And you’re here now and…”  

“Clarke--”

“It’s just been me, Madi, and this radio for so long I’m still getting used to not having to miss you anymore, not having to imagine what you’d say if you were here.”

“I’m sorry it took so long,” he says softly, “if I’d known…”

“I’m not blaming you!” she says quickly and starts walking back with him at last. “I’m just saying I’m still getting used to it. Having you back and… and… and knowing you’re not exactly the same guy I knew six years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I know you feel like approaching the Eligius people was a dangerous call.”

She shrugs with one shoulder. “It worked out, right?”

“I’m still sorry. Not--I think it was the right call. But I’m sorry it was hard for you.”

Her smile is thin. “Like I said. I’ll get used to it.”

***

Clarke is stunned when Echo emerges from the holding cell and immediately presses her lips to Bellamy’s, and then she feels stupid for being surprised. She knew it was a possibility, a likelihood even, that he’d found someone in space. She’d realised in the few months after they’d left that she was in love with Bellamy, and she’s let herself nurse the feeling. It’s always been warm and comforting, and in the two years before she found Madi, she’d imagine all the ways she would tell him she loves him to ease the ache of loneliness a little. And seeing him again, seeing this older Bellamy, a little more wise, a little more tempered, but still _him_ ? The feeling has only grown, twisted a little by the knowledge that he’d long since moved past any time when he might have felt the same. Besides, she’s not naïve--she knew that he wouldn’t go six years in space without finding anyone. She hadn’t thought he’d go for _Echo_ , not after all she’d done, but still… even though he may not have seen the Grounder for three years, he’s spent longer with her than he has with Clarke, so who is she to judge?

“I didn’t know they were a _thing_ ,” Madi’s frowning.

“They weren’t on the ground. Things must have changed in space, Madi, you know that.”

Emori launches herself at Murphy with a cry of “ _John_!” and he actually picks her up and swings her around, like in the movies Clarke used to watch with Wells on the Ark. She smiles. For a few moments, everything is blur of shouting and tears and hugs. It’s only when she hears Monty shout “oh my God!” that she realises the seven of them are done with their reunions, noticing she's alive. Monty and Harper both tackle her into tearful hugs, Emori laughs in delighted disbelief, Echo stares at her in outright incredulity.

“Well, come on,” Clarke says, once she’s done introducing Madi and she’s agreed a place and time to meet with Zeke, one of the Eligius envoys, to provide the information she’d promised, “there’s a lot to tell you guys about.”

Bellamy catches up with her while she’s walking a little to the side of the group, smiling indulgently at where Madi is staring in awe at Emori, having decided she’s some kind of superhero. Emori seems to be enjoying it, spinning some increasingly ridiculous tale that involves her single-handedly taking on a space monster, with Murphy chiming in every so often to add embellishments.

“Hey,” he says.

She smiles at him. “Hi.”

“Thank you,” his voice is low, and he brushes her wrist so she looks at him. “For helping. You got them back.”

Her smile turns wry. “You did the negotiating, Bellamy.”

He snorts. “I’d have had nothing to negotiate  _with_ if it hadn’t been for you. You have all the information and knowledge of Earth they want. And I know you didn’t really want to share it. But thank you.”

Clarke worries her lip. “I am happy to have them back,” she says. “I know I freaked out on you, and I--look, I’ve spent years with my only thought being to keep Madi alive. And when I thought that was going to be jeopardised, it scared the shit out of me. But I missed them too, and I’m glad they’re free now.”

When she looks back at him, his expression has gone achingly soft, and she wants, for an absurd moment, to fold herself into his side and never let go. _He has someone_ , she scolds herself, _get a grip_. “You know I want to protect her too, right?”

“What?”

He nods his head towards Madi. “I know I’m not… I haven’t raised her. I’m not going to pretend to know exactly how you feel about her. But she’s a good kid. She’s your kid. And I swear I’ll be looking out for her.”

She lets herself squeeze his hand before letting go. “You do, though, don’t you?”

“Hmm?”

“Know how I feel about her. When I found her, and she became, well, _mine_ … I think that’s the first time I really got it. Why you did all the stupid things you did for your sister.”

He does that thing he does, where his throat bobs and his lashes flutter a little, and Clarke digs her nails into her hands to keep from doing something stupid. Like kissing him.

Bellamy opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else, but Madi’s calling their names suddenly, demanding fact checks on one of Murphy’s stories, and then Echo walks up to Bellamy and mutters something in his ear, and Clarke turns carefully away, trying to tamp down the churning in her stomach.

 

It’s late when she finally decides to tell Bellamy what she’s been thinking about since they met with the Eligius people.

“We’ve brokered a peace for now,” she murmurs, “but I still don’t trust them. They outnumber us, they’re better equipped, and chances are they won’t be happy when they find out there twelve hundred more people who are going to be competing for resources, once we work out how to get down to the bunker.”

“Twelve hundred and _one_ ,” he corrects. They’re leaning against one of the trees in the clearing they’ve made camp in tonight.

She stares at him. “What?”

His serious expression breaks into a grin, and it almost takes her breath away. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him just look  _happy_ before. “Your mom and Kane were down there a long time. I’m just saying don’t rule out the possibility of a little Clarke junior--”

“ _Shut up_ ,” she grumbles, shoving at him, “don’t be gross.”

“Aren’t doctors supposed to appreciate the miracle of life?”

“Not when the miracle involves my mother’s sex life.”

He grins at her again, shakes his head. “Okay,” he says, “What did you want to talk about?”

Her face grows serious again. “We can’t rule out the possibility that Eligius might still decide to turn on us. And if they do, we should be ready.”

“Do you have anything we can use?” he asks carefully. “Other than your gun.”

“Not much. There are a few spare guns, some ammo. And I collected any scrap parts from Becca’s lab that I thought might be useful… for Raven…” she trails off, feeling herself heat up. There’s something a little embarrassing in admitting how much of the past few years she’s spent living her life  _around_ the assumption they’d all be back, slot into her life again. Especially when they’d spent that time moving on.

If Bellamy notices anything strange in her behaviour, he doesn’t say, just nods. “Can you show me? The guns and things, what we’ve got to work with?”

She nods. “I stashed them a little way from here. We’d have to go in the rover…” Clarke tails off, half-expecting him to want to back out if he knows they’d have to travel together, but he just nods.

“Okay. I’ll let the others know.”

 

“I’ll be _fine_ ,” Madi rolls her eyes when Clarke tells her.

She sighs. She’s never really left Madi alone before, not really, and certainly not with other people.

“They’re you’re _friends_ ,” the girl points out, “I’ll be safe with them. Plus,” she draws herself up straighter, “I can take care of myself.”

“You hear that, Clarke?” Raven asks, slinging an arm around Madi, “she’s got this!” But she gives Clarke an “ _I’ll keep an eye on her_ ” nod, and Clarke nods back.

“Okay,” she says, and goes to join Bellamy.

 

“This feels weird,” he grumbles when she gets to the rover.

“What does?”

“Not driving.”

She laughs. “Do you even remember _how_ to drive? You did it for a couple of months several years ago.”

“I don’t forget these things, Clarke.”

“Even if that were true, you don’t know where we’re going.”

He grunts. “Fine.”

The drive is relatively short, and they pull up at the cave where Clarke’s stashed the weapons just before sunset.

“This is what we’ve got,” she says, pulling back the vines that obscure the cave’s mouth.

He takes in the small pile of guns, ammo, and scrap metal carefully then picks up one of the guns.

Her mouth quirks up when he aims it at a wall that she’d marked with a chalk “X” a while ago, for target practice. “Remembering how to be a badass, Bellamy?”

He fires. The bullet lands several inches to the left of the marking. His ears turn red. “I may be a little out of practice.”

He tries again, and the bullet somehow ricochets off the cave ceiling, and they end up both having to duck to avoid being hit.

She raises an eyebrow at him. “A _little_?”

“The only person I ever came close to needing to shoot in space was Murphy,” he grumbles but looks sheepish.

“Okay, here.” She comes up to him, intending to set his aim straight. It’s only when she one hand on his wrist and reaches around him to set the other his bicep that she’s suddenly hit with the _proximity_. She doesn’t think they’ve ever been this close before, and she’s suddenly hyper-aware that she can feel the swell of his muscles and the heat of his body _right there_. “Um…” she swallows, “just uh,” she forces herself to focus on fixing his aim. “Now try.” Her voice comes out practically as a whisper, and she’s probably imagining it when he shivers a little. He fires the gun, and this time the bullet lands just shy of the center.

He laughs hoarsely with delight, and she forces herself to step back. It’s not far enough back though, because when he turns around he’s still _so close_.

“Thanks,” he says, his gaze locking on her face.

“Yeah, well. You needed the help.”

He ducks his head on a smile. “And so the student became the master. Though you were a quick study, so.”

Clarke blinks. “You remember?”

He frowns. “What?”

“The…with the guns and the bunker… you actually remember?”

He cocks his head to the side, studies her face like he’s looking for something. “Of course I do,” he says roughly.

She swallows, reigning in every reckless desire that’s straining to break her self-control right now. “Okay you,” she says after a beat, taking another step away. Far away.“Back to target practice.”

***

The firelight filters through her hair, setting the gold on fire, and giving the pink-dyed locks the crimson translucency of wine. Bellamy knows it is, on some level, creepy, to watch people while they sleep, but he’s supposed to be on first watch anyway. Everyone _knows_ he’ll be awake and watching over them. But even otherwise, he doesn’t think he could tear his gaze away from Clarke’s sleeping form. She looks more relaxed than he thinks he’s ever seen her, sleeping curled up with her head resting on her hands, cheeks squashed down a little.

“Do you want me to take over?”

He glances at Echo a little warily. He hadn’t been expecting the Ice Nation warrior to kiss him when she emerged, and he wonders a little guiltily if that makes him a dick. They’d been _something_ on the Ark. Not together, like Murphy and Emori, or Harper and Monty. Bellamy had found it hard to imagine sharing that kind of intimacy with anyone on the Ring let alone with Echo. He trusted her now, but it was a different trust than the one he had for Raven or Monty for example, a trust borne of proximity and lack of other options rather than because she’d gone out of her way to demonstrate her reliability.

“I’m fine,” he says, “go back to sleep.”

She raises her eyebrows at him. “You’re going to exhaust yourself again.”

It’s not like they’d been having _hate_ sex or anything. There wasn’t time for hatred up there. Echo was still the woman who’d betrayed him, murdered Gina, threatened Clarke, almost killed Octavia. He couldn’t just forget that because they were trapped together and she wanted him. He knew she wanted him, and after he’d learnt to numb himself so that he could stave off grieving and start surviving, he’d let himself respond to her advances. Not quite for comfort, but…well, it was space. There was an apathy to their arrangement, a detachment from any depth of feeling at all; they never really went for cuddling or basking in afterglow, but there was no urgency to scramble from the other’s bed as soon as they were done.

“I’ll be fine,” he repeated, “you should get some rest. You must be exhausted.”

“I didn’t exactly exert myself in that cell you know. Although,” she leans closer to him, just edging into his space, “if you think you could tire me out…”

An infinitesimal movement in the corner of his eyes captures his attention. A slight breeze had stirred Clarke’s hair, and a few flyaway tendrils hang in front of her, dancing up and down gently each time the breath leaves her nose. Without really thinking about it he reaches out and tucks the strands behind her ear, letting his fingers brush her cheek gently as he pulls his hand away. He glances up and starts when he realises Echo is still waiting for an answer. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Bellamy had worried about her when she’d been taken, in the sense that he didn’t want her to get hurt. He’d planned with Raven and Murphy how to get her and the others back. But he’d _missed_ Murphy and Harper more if he was honest, was more upset for Murphy’s sake about Emori than he was for his… whatever it was with Echo. He hadn't thought about picking it up again when they reunited. And--and this really might make him a dick, but he can’t really help it--none of them being taken had made him feel the way he’d felt shutting the rocket door without Clarke there, watching the Earth burn and believing the flames had taken her. None of the others had made him feel like his heart had been ripped still-beating from his chest and crushed into splinters in front of him; none of the others felt like something vital had been taken from him and thrown his center of balance off-kilter long after the immediate wound of the loss had healed.

Echo’s still staring at him, her gaze gone shuttered, and there’s not really much he can do but wait for her to speak.

“You missed her,” she says. It’s obvious who she means.

“I missed all of you.”

“But you bled for her more. You felt her loss more.” She looks at Clarke’s sleeping frame. “And her return. You feel it more too.”

“That’s not why I don’t think we should continue what we used to do, Echo,” he says gently.

“You’d never have fallen in love with me, is that it?”

His silence is answer enough.

She sighs. “I didn’t pine after you for three years, you know.”

“I believe you.”

“I didn’t think she’d be alive.”

Bellamy’s jaw tightens a little. “Neither did I.”

Echo gets up, stretching out. “If I’d known,” she offers, “I wouldn’t have bothered.” She regards him for a moment. “No, I would have. But I wouldn’t have expected to succeed.”

Beside him, Clarke stirs a little in her sleep, lips moving in an inaudible mumble.

“Goodnight, Bellamy.”

“‘Night.”

 

Bellamy doesn’t think people can really _call him_ on his feelings for Clarke since he’s neither subtle about his pining nor oblivious to how generally pathetic he is. Still, he does feel like he’s being accused of something when Madi stops in front of him, arms folded, and says, “why are you being so  _weird_?”

Madi’s fascination with him, he thinks, has a slightly different colour than the common fascination in which she holds all his friends. The rest of them she seems to see as a group of fictional characters come to life, and she interrogates them on every little detail that Clarke has shared about them. And Clarke has shared a lot.

“They’re not the only stories I told her,” she’d explained to him a few days back, a quiet conversation while she’d showed him which plants were best for food and medicine, “the ones about you guys. But they’re the ones she liked the best. I tried to tell her the stories of the constellations, but I couldn’t remember them properly, so I usually just made them up.”

He’d smiled at that. “Oh yeah? Like what?”

“There was something about the Great Dog using the Big Dipper as a dinghy and sailing the sky in it. Very little Greek mythology involved.”

He’d snorted softly. “I’ll have to fix that.”

She’d frozen a little, and he’d cursed himself inwardly for overstepping his bounds. But then she’d just smiled and said, “I think she’d enjoy that.”

But yeah, Bellamy knew he and his friends had made the bulk of Madi’s bedtime stories. It’s a little strange to think about, that he could have gone from making up stories for Octavia as a kid to _becoming_ one.

He doesn’t think there’s a version of the story Clarke could have told though where a ten-year-old kid wouldn’t end up seeing him as the bad guy. Not when he left the Brave Princess to die. In fact, he’s been generally surprised that Madi hasn’t been more outwardly hostile to him, knowing whatever Clarke has told her. _Beware of Bellamy_ , he imagines Clarke saying, _he’ll love you and leave you behind_ . Instead, the girl’s had a sharp curiosity towards him, always probing him in a way that makes him think she wants to find out who he _is_ , rather than what he’s _done_ the way she does with his friends.

“Weird how?” he returns, mild.

Madi huffs, and her expression looks so quintessentially _Clarke_ that he has to smile. “You’re all…” she waves her hand in the air in front of her, “awkward.”

He bites back on a bark of laughter. “Awkward?”

She nods fervently, apparently deciding she’s conveying the message she wants to. “Yeah. You just stand and watch her from far away looking all _moony_ and then when you talk to her you’re all _Hello Clarke how are you_?”

He chokes at Madi’s impression of his voice, and also thanks his lucky stars none of his asshole friends are here ten-year-old describe him looking at Clarke as _moony_.

“Sorry,” he says, struggling to maintain composure, “is there a problem with being polite?”

“ _You’re_ not _supposed_ to be polite!” Madi groans like he’s misunderstanding the fact that two-times-two and two-plus-two both equal four. “Clarke said _Harper_ was the only one that was ever polite. And _sometimes_ Monty. She got everything right about everyone else!”

Bellamy scratches behind his ear _._ “What exactly do you think she got _wrong_ about me?”

Madi starts counting off on her fingers. “She didn’t say anything about a beard, she said you were tall--”

“I am tall,” he grumbles.

Madi wrinkles her nose. “Nah. She said you were a grumpy asshole--”

“Again, I _am_. And did she really teach you the word asshole?”

“And she basically said you two were going to get married.”

Bellamy almost trips over his own feet. “She said _what_?”

“Well she didn’t _say_ that. She _implied_ it.” She grins impishly at him. “ _Imply_ means she said it without really saying it.”

All of a sudden he feels very, very lightheaded. “Uh… why do you think… are you sure?” Yes, he’s aware it’s pathetic on many levels to be asking a child if the girl he’s in love with likes him back, but in his defense, the kid is _offering_ the information.

Madi rolls her eyes at him. “ _Duh_ . She talked about you the most, and she said you were the bravest and the kindest and the strongest and the bestest of _all_ the bad children. And she said that you were a badass too. Just like her and me. And she used to interrupt me every time I left you out of a story on accident.” She frowns. “That was really annoying. But anyway, you’re her favourite and she said you were the _rebel king_ and that you said she was a _princess_ and then I said that kings have to marry princesses and then _she_ smiled all weird and was like _we’ll see_ and I know when grown-ups say _we’ll see_ it’s supposed to mean _no_ but when _Clarke_ says it, it can also mean _yes_ , and that time, it meant _yes_ , and I know that, because I’m super smart. I learnt the names of all the old Grounder clans in _thirty four minutes_.”

Bellamy just stares at the girl, shell-shocked. She has delivered the whole speech very matter-of-factly, apparently ignorant of the fact that she’s turning his world upside down a little.

“You, uh. You really think I’m being weird, huh?”

“Yup,” she pops the “p,” “‘s why Clarke’s all mopey.”

The kid abandons him to go ask Murphy to let her steer the boat, and although his mind is still reeling, his resolve is building slowly. He should at least _talk_ to Clarke. He doesn’t actually believe Clarke’s in love with him, the way Madi seems to think. But she might not hate him. They make it back to Becca’s island in the next few minutes--Clarke had gone ahead with Raven to show her whatever tech had survived. He wants to talk to her, know where they _really_ stand. Still, it seems like he’s not going to find out anytime soon because before he has time to look for a head of blonde hair, she’s sprinting towards him.

“We’ve got trouble,” she says tightly. “There are representatives from Eligius Corp here. They want to talk.”

***

Bellamy’s expression is thunderous. “What the _hell_ ” he grinds out “are you _doing_?”

She grits her teeth. “The smart thing, Bellamy. The right thing!”

“Smart? You think sending yourself to Eligius like some kind of _tribute_ is the _smart_ thing to do? You’re the one who said we can’t trust them!”

“Which is why we’re sending me and not my ten-year-old daughter!”

“We’re not sending either of you!” he snaps.

Clarke glares at him, but he doesn’t budge. Zeke and Reyna, the other envoy, had been apologetic but unyielding when they explained that the General--Eligius’ leader--had been thinking on the request they’d made back when negotiating for their friends’ freedom: that the Corp use their mining equipment to help open the bunker. The General had agreed, Zeke explained, on the condition that they send one of their “Earth experts” to reside as a “guest” of Eligius Corp in their settlement and act as an advisor on the environment and available resources. Clarke had read the thinly veiled threat easily: either she go with them, or they’d come for her child.

“So what,” she snaps, “you’re just going to wait while you know your sister’s stuck down there? With Kane, and Miller, and my mother?”

He folds his arms across his chest. “We’ll figure. Something. Out.”

“What, Bellamy,  _what_ will we figure out? Because I’ve been trying to solve this bunker problem for over a year, and this is the only viable solution I’ve seen in all that time! But you want to throw it away, and for what?”

“It’s too dangerous,” he snaps right back at her.

“What, you really think we’ll be _safer_ if we just tell them no? You’re not that short-sighted Bellamy, you know they’ll only try to take Madi hostage, or take us out altogether to stave off competition for control of resources. At least if I go with them voluntarily, we gain something from it!”

He doesn’t look at her. “I said _no_.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “In case you’ve forgotten, I don’t take orders from you.” He flinches a little at that, and Clarke would feel bad except she can finally get him to _listen_. “The last time?” she tries again, a little more evenly, “we did it your way, even though I hated it, because it was the _right_ call.”

Bellamy just moves to leave, and suddenly Clarke can’t stand it. She knows he doesn’t feel the way he may once have done for her, that he hasn’t needed her the way she needs him for a long time. But he’s not allowed to walk away from her. Not now.

“ _Hey_ ,” she grabs him by the wrist forcing him to turn to her. “You may think this is a risky idea, Bellamy, but you also know it’s our best option. I know you know that. You’ve kept everyone alive by making the tough calls for so long. Do you really want to jeopardise all that because you don’t want to deal with feeling guilty over me again?”

Bellamy goes rigid. When he speaks, his voice comes out slow and guttural. “You think I don’t want you to go because I want to avoid feeling _guilty_?”

“I don’t _know_ Bellamy! I don’t know what you want anymore! Because I used to think you wanted to save whoever you could and you’re not letting me help you do that! So maybe everything’s changed and I missed it, but that means you’re going to have to tell me what it is you _do_ want, what you think you’re achieving right now, because I’ve got no idea!” She steps right into his space, shoves at his chest. “Fill me in, Bellamy? How do you want this to go?” She shoves again, but he just stands there, nostrils flaring. “You want us to just let everyone in that bunker waste away because you don’t trust me to pull this off?”

“That’s not--”

“Or you want to just wait for Eligius to attack us because you feel like you _owe me_ protection because I didn’t make it onto the spaceship.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Then tell me!” she yells, “tell me what the fuck you _want_!”

“ _Fine_ ,” he spits, and it's his turn to loom over her, “you want to know what I want? You want to know why I’d rather fight those miners with my bare fucking hands than go through with this plan that you know as I well as I do is basically letting a bunch of invaders keep you prisoner until they have no use for you? At which point you’ll probably know too much about _them_ so they’ll just kill you instead of letting you go? You want to know why I’m not gonna let that happen?” He’s backed her almost to the corner of the room now, and he’s leaning down so low that she can feel his breath on her face when he speaks. “You want to know what I _want_?” His eyes bore into hers. Clarke can feel her throat constrict, but she refuses to look away. Bellamy takes another step closer to her, and this time she can feel the cool wall pressed against her back, contrasting starkly with the heat rolling off Bellamy in waves.

“You think everything’s _changed_?” He presses his hands to the wall on either side of her, effectively caging her in. “It hasn’t.” His voice goes soft, rough. “You know what I want?”

She can barely breathe. Clarke just shakes her head once, mutely.

“The same thing I’ve always wanted,” he says, and then his hands cup her face and he’s _kissing her_ , his mouth fierce and desperate against hers. For a moment, she’s too stunned to move, but then he presses against her so that she can feel the whole length of his body, and then her brain catches up. She threads her hands into his hair, weaving the curls around her fingers and tugging slightly. He bites at her lip in retaliation and she groans. He takes the opportunity to push his tongue into her mouth, moving his hands down her sides so he can grab her thighs and hitch her legs around his waist.

She gasps when he moves his mouth to her jaw, trailing hot kisses down the column of her neck.

“Missed you,” he murmurs against her skin, making her shiver, “missed you so much.”

“M-me too.” Clarke struggles to form the words properly, and her hands scrabble at his shirt. He chuckles, and pulls her tight against his chest so he can lift her and move to table. She giggles a little when he drops her down, but then he pulls his shirt off and the laughter dies, her throat tight as she drinks in the sight of him.

He licks his lips. “You, uh… is this okay?”

She nods quickly and grabs at him, tugging him close.

He smirks. “So _eager_.”

“Yeah, well,” she grouses, “in case you’ve forgotten, I haven’t had any action for _years_ , unlike you.”

Bellamy stills for a moment, and when she looks at him his eyes are unbearably gentle. “Yeah. But none of it was with you.”

She feels herself melt a little. “Oh.”

His hands flutter by her sides for a moment before he lets them rest on the table next to her, bowing his head. “Just so we’re clear,” he says thickly, “it’s not because I’m guilty.”

She stares at him. “Huh?”

“The pan. I don't hate it because I'm scared of feeling guilt. Don't get me wrong, I felt fucking awful, when I thought I’d left you to die. I knew it was the right call, but I hated myself for it.”

Clarke smiles at him, bumping her head against his shoulder. “You’d have hated yourself more if you’d waited and we’d all died.”

Absently, he starts rubbing her back with one hand, his fingers slipping just under her shirt, raising hairs where they brush skin. “And then when I found out you were I alive I was _so fucking happy_. Because it didn’t feel real, you know? That I’d spent years thinking I’d never see you again. But I felt…I thought you must hate me. That you’d spent six years thinking I’d abandoned you.”

She sits up at that, frowning. “I _told_ Raven to leave if I didn’t make it back in time,” she says, poking his arm chidingly, “I told you to use your head, and you did. You kept everyone alive. I was--I’m _proud_ of you Bellamy.”

He ducks his head again for a moment before speaking again. “Madi told me…she said you told her stuff about me. Stories. And she thought…she said I was your _favourite_.”

Clarke feels her face turn pink. She needs to have a serious talk with Madi about _boundaries_. “Well, she wasn’t wrong,” she mumbles, unable to meet his gaze.

“ _Clarke_ ,” he tips her chin up so she’ll look at him. “The first few months, I missed you so much, I didn’t think I could _survive_ it. I had to pull myself together eventually. Figured you’d have been pissed if you’d died so I could mope myself to death,” he teases, and she smiles a little. His expression goes serious. “But… I don’t think I could do it again. It’s not that I don’t trust you to do whatever it takes to make this plan work, or that I have a better option on hand. And I know it’s stupid and selfish, and I’m not using my head here. But I--I can’t lose you again.”

Clarke swallows, trailing her finger down the side of his face, over the curve of his cheek and the jut of his jaw. His eyes flutter closed. “Bellamy?” she murmurs.

“Hmm?”

“Earlier. You said… you said you’d always wanted… you want me? ”

“Yeah,” he says, holding her gaze, “I do. I think I’ve wanted you since the moment you yelled at me coming off the dropship the first time. And I fell in love with you some time after that.”

He says the words so matter-of-factly--brushing her hair behind her ears as she does so--like he isn’t setting her heart aflame. “I don’t know exactly when that happened,” he smiles, warm and fond, “but once it did there was no going back.”

Clarke opens her mouth to answer, and suddenly, all the misery and worry of the years thinking she was being forgotten, thinking she had fallen in love with someone who had fallen out of love with her, all of it starts to dissipate, and she feels her eyes misting. Blinking back the tears, she manages a watery smile.

“I realised,” she starts, swallowing down the sobs that threaten to escape, “that I loved you-- _love_ you--a few months after Praimfaya. I think I knew because for the first time in years I wasn’t fighting wars or trying to keep hundreds of other people alive with my decisions, but I still didn’t feel… at peace.” She bites her lip, taking in Bellamy’s face for a moment. He looks as overwhelmed as she feels, but he just keeps up his gentle caresses on her back, waiting for her to finish. “I realised the only way I could ever imagine really feeling that way was if I had you with me. And _God_ I missed you so much.” her fingers curl in his belt loops. “I mean, I missed all of you guys, but _you_ , Bellamy… some days I thought I wouldn’t be able to _breathe_ without you there, like you’d taken half my vital organs with you.” Bellamy presses a kiss to her hair, a quiet reassurance that _he’s here now_. She lets herself close her eyes and just lean into it for a moment before making herself finish her train of thought. “It got better, after I found Madi. I learnt to live for her, and that helped me live for myself. I’d tell her about all of you, but it’s like she told you. I kept coming back to you. I think I wanted her to _know_ you because…” she catches herself for a moment, a little shy, and leans her forehead against his chest, hiding just slightly. “Because I always figured that if you’d been there with me, or if--if you ever came back….she’d be, you know, _ours_.”

She stares at her feet, dangling above Bellamy’s, trying to ease the racing of her pulse.

“Look at me,” he whispers. “Please. I need to see you.”

At last, Clarke meets his gaze, and his eyes are so full she almost has to turn away again. But she doesn’t. She watches as his eyes sweep every inch of her face like he’s committing her to memory, before he leans in carefully and kisses her again. It’s slower, sweeter this time, the desperate edge gone and replaced with something altogether more reverent. His arms wind around her waist, drawing her closer, and when they finally pull apart, he rests his forehead against hers. For a moment, they just sit like that, breathing the same air.

“I should have told you before,” he says after a while, “how I felt. I was going to.”

“Yeah?” She thinks back to their ride in the rover, their quiet conversations at the campsite, wonders how much of that time he’d been trying to work out how to tell her he loves her. The thought has a smile tugging at her lips.

He nods. “Yeah. That day with Roan, and the hydrazine? Before you came back here--I was going to tell you. You interrupted me,” he smirks, “but I shouldn’t have backed down. I should have told you. Given us a little more time.”

Clarke had pulled back in surprise, and now she stares at him, open-mouthed. “You were… you _remember_ that?”

He frowns at her. “What are you talking about?”

“That day, that mission… you remember that? You remember what you were going to say?”

Bellamy regards her face with watchful concern, letting his hands pet soothingly at the ends of her hair. “That’s the second time you’ve seem surprised that I haven’t magically forgotten everything that happened before I left.”

She flushes. “It’s just… I spent years clinging to the memories of you, hoping you were alive, trying to teach Madi about you. You… you thought I was dead, Bellamy. I’d expect you to forget some details after spending six years moving on.” She tries to sound light and teasing, but thinks she misses the mark a little.

He’s frowning now. “You think I’d just forget?”

Clarke looks away. She doesn’t want him to see how her face is twisting up. “I’d expect you to.” She offers him a tiny, one-shouldered shrug. “I mean, what’s a couple of months to six years, right?”

She’s not expecting him to _laugh_ at that, but he does. “Sorry,” he says when she glares at him, giving her shoulders a brief, placating squeeze. “It’s just… Clarke, I survived those years because you asked me to.” He shakes his head at her slowly, as if she’s missed some big obvious sign, and it sends a hopeful warmth seeping through her chest. “It’s not like I was pining away every day,” he says, “I wasn’t. And I once I’d decided I was going to survive, _we_ were going to survive, that was it. I’d decided. We found things to live for, but… _Jesus_ Clarke. The only reason I decided I wasn’t going to waste away to nothingness in space was because I couldn’t stand the thought that your sacrifice was for nothing. The only reason I, or any of us, has a life to move on with was because you gave it to us. How could any of us forget that?”

She leans up to kiss him this time, soft and sweet. “It’s nice to know you haven’t lost your flair for dramatic speeches.”

Bellamy snorts quietly. “I’m serious,” he says, cradling her head in his hands, holding her a little way back so he can look at her properly, “I remember everything. I remember how when you’re worried, you get a little crease right here.” He kisses her forehead, between her eyebrows. “I remember the way your eyes bug out every time you’re lecturing someone.” He kisses each of her closed eyelids.

“They do not _bug out_ ,” she grumbles.

“They do,” he chuckles, “it’s cute.”

She swats at him but not hard.

“I remember,” he continues, “how you get all pink and flushed when you drink too much.” He kisses her cheek. “I remember the way you chew your lip when you think too hard.” He drops a kiss on her mouth, just a whisper. “I remember the way your boobs drive me wild, always have done, especially when you wore that fucking henley.” He tugs at her shirt a little, and slowly, she pulls it off. He presses his mouth to the swell of her breast, and she gasps. He bites down on the flesh, sucks on it hard, soothes it with his tongue. Clarke knows he’s left a mark, and she lets out a strangled moan.

“ _Bellamy_.” Her hands grasp at his hair as he moves his hands down her sides. His fingers hook into the waist of her trousers and he pulls them down, taking her panties with them. His eyes find hers, and Clarke feels like the whole world is holding its breath with her.

“I remember everything,” he repeats, kissing the inside of her knee. Then he fixes his gaze on her center, and Clarke stops breathing. “And what I don’t remember,” he kisses the crease where her thigh meets her hip, his breath stirring her golden thatch of curls, “I’m going to learn."

Then his mouth is on her, and Clarke manages to breathe the words _"I love you”_ before her mind goes blank and she sees stars.

***

After, they lie on the floor, sated and sweaty. Clarke rests her chin on his bare chest, looking at him, and Bellamy loves the feeling of her bare skin on his. She’s tracing designs on his bicep with her fingertips, and he shivers at the feeling.

“It feels like I’m going to wake up,” she murmurs, “and this is just going to go away. I had _dreams_ about moments like this; it’s hard to believe it’s real.”

“I know the feeling,” he rumbles. He doesn’t know how to look away from her, how to stop touching her.

She buries her smile against his side.

“Bellamy?” she glances up him. “You’re in this for real, right?”

“Are you asking me I wanna be boyfriend-and-girlfriend?” he teases, catching her hand when she moves to smack him and pressing a kiss to her fingers. “In case it wasn’t clear,  _yes_ , Clarke, I’m in this for real.”

“Good,” she grouses, “I’d have been pissed otherwise.” She scoots up so she’s laying next to him, tucking herself under his arm. He picks up his jacket and drapes it over them like a blanket.

He gazes down at her, and grins. “You know,” he says, “some things _have_ changed.”

She nods, contemplative. “I knew they would have. We’re not exactly the same people we were, and there’s all these new sides of you I don’t know. But I’d like to get to know them,” she smiles at him.

Bellamy feels like his heart might burst in his chest. “Same goes for you, princess. I want to know every part of you. But that’s not what I was talking about.”

“Oh?”

He props himself up on an elbow. “I meant _this_ ,” he says, tugging on the shock of pink in Clarke’s short hair.

She giggles at that, and it makes him beam like an idiot. “It was easier to keep it short, stopped twigs and leaves from getting stuck in it. I let Madi try dyeing some of it with berries a couple of years ago, and I ended up just keeping it.”

“I like it. It’s sexy.” He can’t resist stealing another kiss--now he knows he’s allowed to do it, he can’t seem to make himself stop.

It’s Clarke’s turn to grin. “Good. Besides, you’re one to talk about bold fashion statements.” She raises an eyebrow and brushes the scruff of his beard with her knuckles. “This is new.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess it is.” He rubs at it, a little sheepish. “It was just my grief beard for the first few days, and then I rolled with it. It makes me look mature.”

“It’s a beard, Bellamy, not a miracle.”

“I resent that.”

She snorts, rolling over so she’s splayed on top of him. “Also, there’s no _way_ you grew that in a few days.”

“It may,” he amends, “have been closer to a couple of weeks.”

Clarke fixes him with one of her most penetrating stares.

“A month,” he concedes, sighing, “and a half.”

She laughs, and the laughs turn into shrieks when he flips her over and pins her under him, tickling her ribs until she’s thrashing. “ _Stop_ ,” she whines.

He traps her wrists with his hands but lets up on the tickling. “So, Princess,” he asks, waggling his eyebrows, “do you think  _my_ new look is sexy?”

Clarke scrunches up her nose, yipping a little when he drops a kiss on it. “I don’t know,” she muses, “I can’t decide if I like it or not.”

“Well then,” Bellamy knows his smile is wolfish as he lowers himself down her body again, letting the stubble graze her as he goes and noting the way it makes her pupils blow wide, “allow me to convince you.”

 

Bellamy follows Clarke to the rover that night. Madi’s asleep inside it, but he sits himself next to Clarke on the hood. “We usually sleep out here, Madi and I,” she says, “even when we’re on the island. I liked being outdoors to watch the sky.”

“Do you think she’ll be okay with it? With us?” he asks, hoping his voice doesn’t betray his nervousness.

Judging by the reassuring squeeze Clarke gives his hand, he thinks it probably does. “We’ll talk to her in the morning,” she promises. “But for what it’s worth, I think she’ll be okay. Happy even, once she adjusts to it. I think she’s always rooted for us.”

He allows himself to bask in it for a moment, the idea that somewhere down the line, sometime soon, they might be a family. It makes his eyes a little wet, and Clarke rests her head on his shoulder. “We still have other stuff to figure out,” he says after a while, and with some reluctance, “what we’re going to do about Eligius Corps. I know I was being a dick about it, and I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologise,” she reassures him, “ but you understand that my going there is an option we might have to take, right? It’s not my favourite idea, but we can’t just dismiss it.”

“I know,” he sighs, “I know that.”

“And we need to do _something_ about the bunker.”

He nods. “We’ll keep it on the table,” he promises, “but for my sake--can we leave it as a last resort? We can try negotiate with the miners. You being with us gives us some leverage, at least for a little while.”

Clarke nods. “We can try persuade them to stick to weekly briefings, designate neutral land… we have options.”

Bellamy nods, and he feels, more strongly than he has in years, a burgeoning sense of hope. There’s a lot to be done, starting with tomorrow. The whole group will have to convene and talk about Eligius. Clarke had mentioned they’d need to restock their supply of medicinal plants now that there were more of them, plus Harper had some old wounds from her time imprisoned that need to be reexamined. They’d need to check the hunting traps too. And Bellamy wants to tell Madi a story, maybe the one about Odysseus and the Cyclops--she might like that, she seems to like her heroes clever…

“We’ll figure it out,” he says, and she kisses his cheek, “together.”

He can see Clarke’s cheeks lift in a smile through the corner of his eye. “Together,” she says, taking his hand as they lay themselves back against the hood of the rover, watching the stars that hang above them, washing the world in their pulsing silver light.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos/Comments will make Bellarke reunite faster <3


End file.
